Ever wondered what the average governor looks like? Swindon, known as the survey capital of the UK because it is a microcosm of the population nationally, has been finding out.

Step forward the 47-year-old governor living just under two miles from school, who has been serving for a little over four years and is as likely to be male as female.

“It originally stemmed from wanting to get a better handle on ethnic-minority representation on governing bodies,” says David Hughston, the town’s governor recruitment officer.

“I was trying to get a baseline of who the typical governor is, if there is such a thing, to better target any recruitment initiatives or programmes we were going to do.”

Thus was born a questionnaire, sent to 1,015 governors at the town’s 83 schools, which garnered an impressive 510 responses. Board members were asked about their age, length of service, gender, ethnic origin, and even how far away they lived from their school.

The results confirmed what Mr Hughston had suspected about the representation of different communities on local school boards.

“We were roughly where we thought we were - about 2 per cent compared to 6 per cent in the Swindon population. ” But the survey threw up other interesting figures, particularly on the characteristics of different kinds of governors.

Nearly three in 10 governors had given continuous service for more than five years. LEA governors were, on average, the oldest (53) and the longest-serving (five years two months). Parent governors were the youngest (38) and predominantly female (60 per cent). Co-opted governors were predominantly male (60 per cent).

Teachers lived furthest away from school (4.3 miles), parent governors the closest (1.2 miles) - but the average for all governors was less than two miles, with more than half living within a mile. “The distance from school, broken down by type of governor, was helpful. I approach individual governing bodies and point out that the majority of governors are right on your doorstep - and that that’s where recruitment activities should be targeted,” says Hughston.

His target is to get more young people on governing bodies and he is hoping big businesses can help fill the 70 to 80 vacancies for co-opted governors from their graduate recruits.

“Young people will have different ideas, different ways of looking at things. It’s not that we want to load all governing bodies with young people, it’s just that it would be nice to have one or two on each board,” he said.

David Hughston is happy to share the Swindon questionnaire. Email david_hughston@swindon.gov.uk or phone 01793 465723